


By Your Side (Where I'll Be)

by misura



Category: King Arthur (2004)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 19:56:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18300929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: "Forget Rome," Lancelot says. "Come home with me. I will introduce you to my mother, my brothers and younger sister."





	By Your Side (Where I'll Be)

"A trade," Lancelot offers, because he's feeling warm and generous and willing to listen Arthur prattle on for hours and hours about Rome and how all the wisdom and justice in the world may be found there, a surplus of evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

Arthur groans. He's grown more thoughtful in public, these past weeks. More passionate in private, also. Lancelot suspects he knows the cause well enough, but, like the proof that Rome lacks all sense of right and honor that surrounds them, it is a topic they have silently agreed not to talk about.

"You know full well that I could deny you nothing," Arthur says, adding, before Lancelot can beat him to it, "Within reason."

Lancelot would like to know what he has ever said or done to make Arthur feel that addition is required. A less confident man might begin to doubt Arthur's affections.

"Have I ever not been reasonable?" Lancelot asks. It's early morning still. Plenty of time left to indulge himself - and Arthur as well, of course. "Do I not let you speak endlessly, of Rome and all its delights and joys?"

"No one who has seen you fight would mistake you for a man of reason," Arthur says, smiling.

"By that logic, neither are you," Lancelot points out. Arthur's body is hard and lean against his own. Strange, to imagine Arthur as a man of peace, a man content to sit around and do nothing. A man of leisure, grown fat and lazy in a city full of people who let others do their fighting.

Arthur meets his eyes. "I will be. Soon."

_When our fifteen years of service are up._ Once, fifteen years felt like a very long time. A lifetime, or nearly so. Now, with each day that passes, Lancelot feels it has been too short, that time has slipped away from him.

"Forget Rome," Lancelot says. "Come home with me. I will introduce you to my mother, my brothers and younger sister."

"Is she pretty, your sister?" Arthur asks, a faint grin on his face.

Unlike Lancelot, Arthur has never felt the need to cover up a lack of interest in women by a show of lechery. It's yet one more item on the long list of things that make Arthur so annoyingly impossible not to love.

If not for Arthur, Lancelot know he would be glad, that he would welcome the prospect of their discharge, rather than fret over it. Knowing Arthur feels the same is little enough comfort.

"She looks nothing like me," Lancelot says.

"That would be a 'yes', then."

"If you are so very eager to spend the next few nights in a cold and lonely bed, there are easier ways to go about it." Arthur's body belies Lancelot's accusation. "I meant what I said. What can Rome offer you that I cannot?"

Too direct, perhaps. Too honest, if such a thing exists between the two of them.

"I had hoped to have you both," Arthur says. "Would you make me choose?"

_It is_ Rome _that would make you choose._ Lancelot does not voice the thought. No one would think Arthur naive, yet on the topic of Rome, he is - dangerously so, Lancelot sometimes thinks.

There is no honor in Romans. What happiness, then, might an honorable man find in fabled Rome?

_Rome will break your heart as surely as I would keep it safe._

"I doubt Rome would suit me," Lancelot says. _Or welcome me, even._

"Make no mistake, if I must give up my dream to visit Rome in order to keep you with me, I will do so," Arthur says. "Without a second thought."

Lancelot doubts that last part, but he is flattered and a little bit reassured nonetheless. Annoyed, too, at Arthur avoiding the discussion. Again.

"Is that the trade you were speaking of? If so, consider the bargain made." Arthur sounds relieved.

Lancelot resists the temptation to get out of bed and find a bucket of cold water to dump over Arthur's head. It would be a childish gesture, and impractical besides, even if Arthur has long since outgrown the age on which he would not consider retaliation of some sort beneath his dignity. (There would be words, though. Empty, meaningless words.)

"I will come to Rome with you," Lancelot offers. "If you will come to Sarmatia with me, after. _That_ is the exchange I would make. Fair enough, is it not?"

Arthur stills. He dreams of settling down in Rome, to spend his days with philosophers and poets, Lancelot knows. Sarmatia is not so civilized as to have either.

"How long?" Arthur asks.

_Six weeks, two days._ "As long as you like," Lancelot answers. If he is right, there's no harm in magnanimity. If he is wrong - well, then Gawain is welcome to his beautiful Sarmatian bride, and Bors to his life with Dagonet and Vanora and his legion of bastard children.

"You are so sure that I will not find what I have looked for all my life that there are times when I might almost begin to have doubts myself," Arthur says.

"Almost." Lancelot's hands find the traces of a scar, a reminder of a long-ago battle. They were not yet lovers then, but Lancelot remembers the wound nonetheless, the rage that took hold of him as he slew the man responsible, and the flash of something awful in Arthur's eyes as he witnessed.

Not an even fight, by a long shot. Battles with the Woads are ever thus, though, their strength in their numbers and their superior knowledge of the terrain, the woods, rather than in their individual skill.

"That said, you offer a fine bargain, and I will accept it with a glad heart," Arthur says. "How would you suggest we seal it?"

Lancelot grins, allowing himself for a moment to forget his concerns. "As to that, I believe I may have some ideas."


End file.
